Factory Farming Ducks Factory Farming PoultryOnly fools think our attitude to our fellow men is a thing distinct from our attitude to 'lesser' life on this planet.John Fowles In the wild ducks live for about fifteen years.

Ducts are aquatic animals they spend 80 percent of their time in water.

To stay healthy ducks need access to water in ponds lakes and rivers and space to roam freely.

Ducks also want to live, and have young as do you and I. These are two basic instincts common to all creatures. Furthermore all creatures experience and wish to avoid pain.

The conditions of factory farming mentioned below takes place in the UK and the USA however similar exists in most countries throughout the world. And in addition the production of foi gras in France which is banned here in the UK

You may not be aware of this but almost all duck meat you see in your supermarket or eat in a restaurant comes from factory farms. Most duck however is bred for restaurants; often part of the menu in Chinese restaurants duck is seen as a special treat. However a treat for you is a nightmare for the ducks; as your indulgence involves immense cruelty. I like to think that if the facts where known few people would eat duck.

In the UK The Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs Defra recommends that ducks be kept in conditions which permit them to live as naturally as possible to allow"the fulfilment of essential biological requirements of ducks, in particular respect of water, and the maintenance of good health". However in reality this recommendation comes no where near to being carried out. One recommendation is that ducks have enough water to immerse themselves and splash their backs, but this rarely happens as such recommendations cannot it seems be enforced.

I had not thought of ducks as being subjected to factory farming as they are far less popular than chickens or even turkeys, but sadly it seems that few creatures escape this particular insidious and cruel method of farming. Throughout the entire world ducks are being deprived of their natural habitat in ponds, lakes and rivers and reared for meat and eggs in factory farms.

And make no mistake the factory farming of ducks is as horrifyingly inhumane as it is for other poultry. There is no outdoor access ever, these poor creatures never in their short abused lives see natural light.

Ducks like chickens and turkeys are crammed into sheds with as many as 10,000 ducks, about 8 per square metres in each shed in close confinement on concrete or wire floors, existing in litter soaked in faces which like chickens and turkeys results in painful ammonia burns. They are given dry pelleted food, ducks naturally eat water plankton, seeds, plants, insects and worms. Those kept on wire floors suffer tears and abrasions to their feet. Kept in constant artificial light they never see the natural light of day, feel the warmth of the sun or the wind on their backs let alone swim in a pond or fly. In their natural environment ducks like to splash water over their bodies and to immerse themselves; in factory farms other than their drinkers there is no water, in some factory farms there are not even troughs in which the ducks may immerse their heads, there is in short no water for ducks to behave as ducks instinctively do. In addition to being a health benefit, more about this later, ducks simply enjoy water as anyone knows who feeds ducks at their local village or park pond or river .

"The favourite time of the week for our ducks is Saturday morning, when we clean out their pool. They quack maniacally, then jump into the clean water, preening and dipping under.

Jem and Cherry are working birds - they're supposed to eat slugs in the vegetable garden but, unlike chickens, leave the veg alone. But even when allegedly working, they will sit on water for hours - even in a washing-up bowl on the lawn. Their enjoyment of water, and the fact that ducks are aquatic, makes it all the more surprising that most of the 18 million ducks reared for meat in this country have no access to water for bathing."Read the complete article:

In the wild ducks can fly at speeds of 50 miles an hour, confined in sheds they hardly have room to walk let alone fly. They become subject to disease as they are unable to preen and clean themselves, the consequence is dirty poor feather condition resulting in an inability to keep warm. Many suffer as a result of eye disease, ducks need water to rinse their eyes; with out water to do this they go blind. Other disabilities arise also from an inability to cleanse themselves. Many fall onto their backs and are not able to right themselves, there is no one to right them, no one cares, there is virtually no one to care: in one UK based company, the most intensive enterprise of its kind there are as many as 85,000 birds tended by only one person. Consequently these poor creatures die a frightening and protracted death as they struggle in vain to right themselves. Read the extract below from a resent Viva campaign, the shocking facts should brings tears to any sensitive person's eyes. Yet these atrocities and worse continue often undetected and condoned throughout the whole practice of factory farming

"Modern farming techniques have turned the fluffy Easter duckling image into a sick joke. 19 million ducks were slaughtered in the UK in 2005 (in the mid 1970’s the UK duck population was barely a million). We know what these birds lives are really like because we have investigated several duck units. Twice we visited Manor Farm Ducklings, who then supplied Marks & Spencer. On our first visit, we saw thousands of fluffy, yellow ducklings in stinking, windowless sheds. Some could barely walk and dragged themselves across on their wings. Others had fallen on their backs and were unable to right themselves and this is how they would die - a horrible, stressful death. Many had already lost the battle to live and their little corpses were scattered amongst the straw. One duckling had fallen behind machinery and was hopelessly trapped - calling desperately for a mother who would never come."﻿http://www.viva.org.uk/what-we-do/marks-spencer-duck-farm-shame

Why are not ducks given the water they need? Well as usual its all to do with profit. In such confined conditions as factory farms water spreads disease when ducks take in water into thier systems, which is than evacuated into the water which other ducks drink with the result of the spread of disease, which may result in serious health problems including avian flu. Ducks are derived of water should the water spread disease. Another reason for the severe restriction of water is because ducks naturally like to splash water over their bodies and in nature this is no problem of course, however in the unnatural environment of factory farms such behaviours causes choking ammonia to be released from the faeces-covered floor.

The answer of course to the spread of disease in water is simply not to factory farm ducks or indeed any other animal.

Did you know that a duck's beak is as sensitive as your finger tips? Yet like their chicken and turkey counterparts many suffer the painful process of debeaking with out anaesthetics or pain killers. Ducks have highly sensitive beaks due to an intensive cluster of nerves in this area, therefore this procedure is extremely painful and results thereafter in chronic pain and difficulty in eating

Farm ducks retain their wild habits, in the wild ducks choose a mate and live for ten to fifteen years. However in the factory farms they are not allowed to mate in the natural way. In their natural environment ducks care for their young and are fiercely protective, the mother teaches them how to fly and swim, clean their feathers ,eat and behave how ducks evolved to behave. In factory farms none of the ducklings ever see their mother. Female ducks have been selectively breed to produce 100 percent more ducklings than they did five years ago. A duck has been produced to lay as many as 275 eggs each year, ten times in access of ducks in the wild evolved to lay.

Mother ducks have been bred to produce 100 per cent more ducklings than five years ago. Cherry Valley say that they have produced a ‘superduck’ which lays up to 275 eggs a year – ten times what she has evolved to lay. This unnaturally high output of eggs causes a disease – egg peritonitis – that is the main cause of death in laying ducks. The duck’s ovaries become inflamed and the reproductive tracts rupture causing agony.

Wild birds fly, swim, dive and walk – however, the farmed birds are bred to be heavy. They may be unable to fly, have difficulty in walking and are prone to leg disorders. All this in a seven week life. The natural life-span of a duck is 15 years. And what of their death? They are usually hung upside down on a conveyor system, causing great pain to birds which may already have broken legs or injuries. Their heads are then supposed to be dipped into an electrical waterbath. However, both the Council of Europe and Bristol University have shown that the majority of ducks are not stunned properly – and are knifed fully conscious.

Farmed ducks have been bred from wild Mallard ducks and retain much of thei wild instincts and behaviours. It is a fact that the Council of Europe has ruled that farmed birds are essentially still wild and retain their biological behaviours which they have evolved. In their natural habitats mallards are aquatic, social creatures living in large flocks in autumn and winter and in spring and summer living in pairs. The female producing about eights eggs, two or three times each year. Ducks will forage on land but obtain their food mainly from water, straining out plankton and other food through their beaks.In the factory farm system, the ducks who lay the eggs for hatching are made to moult, this is done by starving them; all food is denied them until they have lost a third of their body weight. Some times even water is removed for twenty four hours at a time. This is a method which brings about an extra egg laying cycle but which results in about half of the birds loosing their primary feathers and many dying, also of significance of course is the stress, fear and misery which results from the effects of starvation on any animal.

A particularly horrifying factory farming abuse is the production of Foie gras.

Millions of ducks are selected for the production of Foie gras, mostly in France but also elsewhere such as the USA and hungry. Foie gras is a French term which means fatty liver. This is produced by force feeding both ducks and geese large amounts of meal which enlarges their liver to ten times its normal size. This dreadful abuse results in much suffering . Ducks raised for Foie gras, suffer from hepatic lipidosis, a pathologically enlarged, physiologically impaired liver."During the force-feeding process, the duck is grabbed by the neck and a metal tube 8 feet long is forced down her esophagus. The desired amount of high fat, high carbohydrate corm mush is pushed through the tube into the duck's esophagus by either a manual or pneumatic plump. The amount of food the birds are forced to ingest is far greater than they would eat voluntarily. In fact by the end of the force feeding period, each duck is forced to consume 400 to 500 grams per day, approximately one pound of corn and oil mixture ... This is the amount that, for a 175 pound person, would be equivalent to 44 pounds of pasta per day. The force-feeding process is repeated 2-3 times per day for up to one month. In order to facilitate the force feeding process for farm workers, the ducks are either confined in groups in small pens, or are restrained in individual cages so small the birds can't turn around or stretch thier wings."

Ducks and geese are crammed into tiny cages there is no room to move let alone walk. Here they are forced fed as a metal tube is forcibly pushed down their throats, there is no escape, no respite, three times each day, day after day after day they are subjected to this horror.

Stacked closely together in dark windowless sheds these poor creatures await the most horrific of abuse imaginable as a steel tube is forced down their throats three time each day to forcibly feed them, to enlarge their liver.

Think if you eat foie gras you are eating diseased liver. That's right diseased liver! For more details see the section about Geese: Animal rights: Geese

Like chickens and turkeys the life of a duck in a factory farm is a far cry from that which nature intended, their lives bear no resemblance whatsoever to the ducks you feed on the village pond.

In a factory farm there is nothing remotely natural about their existence and most defiantly nothing remotely humane. They like other unfortunate creatures are exploited, a means to an end treated as nothing more than egg and meat producing machines, not thinking feeling beings.

Their life span is drastically cut short, when at only seven weeks they are cruelly slaughtered, 20 million here alone in the UK each year. You cannot imagine can you those cute ducks we all like to feed at the local pond, fluffy yellow chicks a symbol of Easter and the arrival of spring, treated so cruelly; somehow people fail to make the connection as they sit down to Peking duck in the local Chinese restaurant or tuck into duck a l'orange that these self same ducks are farmed in such shocking conditions.

The misery continues at the slaughter house where death is anything but humane, if the act of taking another creatures life can ever in any circumstances be humane. In the USA as many as 100 million birds are not stunned before their throats are cut. Stunning is in any event enormously painful. Many may appear to be unconscious but are instead paralysed, but still of course aware of what is happening to them. Many are alive when they are immersed into the defeathering tank of scalding water.

In the UK of the 18 million ducks reared each year only 5 percent are free range. Again as with other poultry many consumers are conned into believing that free rang farm animals live in more humane and natural conditions, again nothing could be further from the truth.

Although somewhat better off their lives are by no means natural. Free range ducks are kept in flocks of between 4,500 to as many as 8,000 in out door paddocks, troughs are provided but still there is no where to swim. And at the end of the day they like, any other farmed animal face the ultimate cruelty as they are killed prematurely.

Don't forget the down or feathers in your pillows, duck down in your pillows means that the duck has either been slaughtered or plucked alive. That's right plucked alive! You can't imagine it can you, neither could I until researching information for this website page. Duck down grows under the surface feathers of the bird, this provides insulation for the bird, either a duck or a goose, although as goose down is better quality most down comes from geese. It is sought after as it makes for a comfortable pillow or as insulating for quilts, padded jackets, sleeping bags. For more information about the shocking, painful and highly traumatic practice of live plucking see the section on geese

Although eider ducks are protected species they do not escape unscathed. Each year farmers in Iceland gather more than 6,500 pounds of down feather, taken from the nests of eider ducks. The mother duck plucks these from her chest to line her nest in order to insulate her eggs from the cold, removing them causes the chicks to die.

Now please do not allow yourself to be led into thinking that because female ducks pluck down from their breasts to line their nests that plucking is painless. The mother ducks only takes a few, they are not ripped from her forcibly, which happens when she is plucked. Another misconception which many people try to use to justify this abuse as being painless is that ducks and geese moult. Moulting is of course painless, feathers simply drop out much as you hair does from time to time without you even noticing it. Therefore such arguments to justify this cruelty are invalid. Ducks and geese after such treatment take several days to recover from the shock. After being grabbed and having their feathers and or down torn from them they stagger about trembling and lean against supports or huddle together. It is extremely painful, rather like having all your hair pulled out. Ducks like us have a brain and nervous system and will of course feel pain.

There are now excellent alternatives and no one needs down or feathers, which are in any case not for our use, they evolved to keep ducks and other waterfowl warm.

Below are links to websites with more information concerning the exploitation and abusive methods of factory farming meted out to ducks.

The solution as always is to stop eating ducks or their eggs and avoid the purchase of products which use their feathers or down. There are other actions you may take by visiting the website below where you will also find advice about altering your diet to avoid meat or eggs.